Each day Internet users submit an inordinate number of requests to search engines, such as Yahoo!®, Google™, Ask Jeeves®, etc. Search requests contain information that, if processed properly, can provide insight into the purchasing habits and other user characteristics of interest to businesses.
Current search request processing tends to be inefficient, such as the extraction process of search terms from search requests. For example, the extraction of search terms from click-stream referrer search engines may include coding IF-THEN conditional expressions for each search engine and placing these expressions in large and cumbersome IF-THEN-ELSE blocks.